A chinese Rainbow family who makes things change!

During our visit in Beijing we were happy to meet Rui and her partner Chen as well as their twins Helen and Harry.

Rui was my main contact in China and it was thanks to her and her LGBT network that we were able to live this incredible human experience in China. Rui and Chen met at work while they were both employed by a Chinese Non Governmental Organization. In 2014, they lived in Great Britain for a few months to do a Master degree. Great Britain authorizing access to medically assisted procreation for lesbian couples, Rui and Chen tried two in vitro fecondation but unfortunately it did not work. In 2015, they are back in China and still wish to become mothers. They decide to do an in vitro fertilization (IVF) in clinic in Portland (USA).

It was Rui who carried the twins but it was Chen’s eggs that were used during IVF. This is called reciprocal IVF. They chose an American donor.

In April 2016, Helen and Harry were born in China.

Rui stoped working to take care of the children and decided to create a discussion group on WeChat (the main Chinese social network) to share their story and exchange information regarding access to assisted procreation abroad for LGBTQ people or single women.

This is how Rainbow Babies was created in China and today has more than 10,000 subscribers on WeChat.

During our visit to China, Rui had organized conferences with the associations of Suzhou, Xian and Chengdu so that we could present our family and our Love makes a family world tour project . Rui and her family even joined us in Chengdu to co-present the conference with us.

At the end of this Chengdu conference, Rui realized the interest of physical meetings between rainbow families or LGBTQ couples interested by this topic. So she started (face to face) Meet-up groups so that same-sex families meet and kids play together.

Rui and Chen just published the first chinese book for kids telling a story about family diversity.